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Authors: Stephanie Coontz

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A husband rarely displayed such open-mindedness about a wife’s sexual behavior while she was married to him, but this had as much to do with fear that she might bear another man’s child as with love-based jealousy. One of the most important functions of marriage for the propertied classes was the production of legitimate children who would honor the father in his old age, show respect to the ancestors and clan gods, and perpetuate the family’s property. A Greek orator in the fourth century B.C. explained: “We have hetaerae [courtesans specially trained to be pleasing companions] for pleasure, concubines for the daily care of our body, but wives to bear us legitimate children and to be the trusted guardians of our household.” Under the Roman Republic, census takers determined if a Roman citizen was single by asking: “Have you married for the purpose of creating children?”
28
When Greek husbands eulogized their departed wives, they seldom talked of their mutual love or the personal qualities they treasured in their wives. The most common words of praise for a wife were that she showed “self-control,” an attribute connected in Greek thought to female chastity and to a wife’s protection of her husband’s property. Under Athenian law, a man’s seduction of another’s wife was punishable by death, but the rape of another man’s wife merited only a monetary fine. The Athenians reasoned that a rapist did not pose a threat to the husband’s household property because the woman could be counted on to dislike the rapist. But “he who achieves his end by persuasion,” said the legislators, gained access not only to the woman’s body but to her husband’s storeroom.
29
Even people with little property to protect took a calculating approach to marriage. Today we often talk about working
at
our marriages, meaning that we try to cultivate and nurture the personal relationship between husband and wife. But until two hundred years ago people who were not part of the highest elites of society worked
in
their marriages.
Marriage was one of the ways farmers and peasants organized the growing workload that accompanied the transition from hunter-gatherer and horticultural societies. Intensive agriculture or herding made a sexual division of labor within the household necessary for survival. The Greek poet Hesiod told men: “Get first a house and a wife and an ox to draw the plough.”
30
The rules that governed marriage and divorce in the upper classes were usually more relaxed for commoners. States did not generally get involved in validating marriages or regulating divorces unless substantial property or political privileges were involved. In ancient Egypt, marriage was a private matter. Propertied families usually drew up private marriage contracts, but for commoners there were no special rituals or licenses necessary to get married. A marriage came into existence when a man established a household with a woman. This loose definition of marriage also held true in ancient Rome.
31
But formalized or not, something akin to marriage was essential for the survival of almost any commoner who was not a slave. Some historians believe that the lower classes of the ancient world were the only people who had the luxury of selecting marriage partners on the basis of love. But most commoners understood the need for a prudent approach to choosing a mate, and practicality usually trumped sentiment.
A woman needed a man to do the plowing. A man needed a woman to spin wool or flax, preserve food, weave blankets, and grind grain, a hugely labor-intensive task. A woman was also needed to bear more children to help in the fields. And households in ancient chiefdoms and kingdoms usually were required to work for their rulers as well as for themselves. Some rulers demanded that each household provide a certain amount of male services, such as plowing, and a certain amount of female ones, such as spinning or weaving. When men were called away from their farms or trades to work on state-sponsored building projects, such as irrigation systems, public storehouses, or temple complexes, someone had to take care of the house and fields in their absence.
32
Slaves were forbidden to marry and set up their own households. But for everyone else, the intense demands on household production in ancient states practically forced people to marry or cohabit. Single-person households simply could not survive. In Rome, this became a problem during the late republic and early empire, when frequent military campaigns drained the supply of freemen living in Rome. Some freewomen reportedly sought husbands among slaves, threatening the interests of the slaveowners and causing considerable status anxiety among Roman commentators. Seneca labeled such unions “Marriage more shameful than adultery.” In A.D. 52 a law was passed enslaving any freeborn woman who cohabited with a slave without the knowledge or consent of his master. In the third century A.D., the emperor Septimus Severus ruled that it was illegal for a Roman woman to free one of her slaves in order to marry him.
33
On the other hand, the upper classes sometimes required their subjects or employees to marry. Around 160 B.C., the Roman statesman and moralist Cato the Elder wrote a book telling wealthy Roman landowners how to run their estates. He said the estate’s overseer needed a wife to relieve him of all housework, “since he ought to go out with the slaves at first light, and return at twilight, exhausted by the work he has done.”Assuming it was the landowner rather than the overseer who would choose the wife, Cato recommended that she should be neither ugly nor beautiful, for “ugliness will disgust her partner, while excessive beauty will make him lazy.”
34
Even when lower-class individuals got to choose their own mates, beauty and attraction were seldom the primary criteria. A strong arm was generally more important in a prospective spouse than a shapely leg. In many villages, choice of a mate was restricted by sparse population and poor transportation. You could not get too picky when you might meet only a handful of potential marriage partners in your entire life. Few individuals of modest means had either the inclination or the opportunity to seek a soul mate. What they really needed was a work partner.
The same consideration held true somewhat higher on the economic ladder. Among landowners and craftsmen, choosing a wife was like hiring your most important employee. The Old Testament contains a detailed job description:
Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.
The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall
have no need of spoil.
She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.
She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her
hands.
She is like the merchants’ ships; she bringeth her food from afar.
She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her
household, and a portion to her maidens.
She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her
hands she planteth a vineyard.
She girdeth her loins with strength, and strenghteneth her arms.
She perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth
not out by night.
She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff.
She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth
her hands to the needy. . . .
She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto
the merchant.
Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in
time to come.
She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the
law of kindness.
She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not
the bread of idleness.
Proverbs 31: 10-20, 24-27, King James Version
A husband with such a hardworking wife would be rash indeed to fire half his labor force just because someone else caught his fancy. But the continuity of the family line was also a major concern for commoners, especially farmers. The need for children to work in the fields was so pressing that a wife who was not fertile often had to be put aside, regardless of how much affection might have developed within the couple.
The lower and middle classes made decisions about marriage and divorce according to criteria different from those used by the upper classes. But in neither case were these decisions likely to be based primarily on love and sexual attraction. For thousands of years, beginning in the earliest civilizations, the economic functions of marriage were far more important to the middle and lower classes than were its personal satisfactions, while among the upper classes, the political functions of marriage took first place.
Chapter 5
Something Borrowed: The Marital Legacy of the Classical World and Early Christianity
T
he tremendous turmoil and frequent violence caused by shifting marital alliances, in-law intrigues, and inheritance disputes led rulers to try to restrict competing family coalitions. Groups that made their living through trade or agricultural production also had an interest in curbing the disruptive power struggles of rival dynasties. The ancient world therefore saw periodic attempts by reformers to develop less personal, more predictable forms of rule.
Ultimately, none of their efforts succeeded in displacing the marriage alliance system from its central role in politics and economics. But three attempts to curtail aristocratic family power eventually had particular significance for the development of marriage in Western Europe. The first was the establishment of democracy in Athens in the fifth century B.C. The second was the imposition of universal law and development of a professional army in the Roman Republic and early empire. A third came in the later days of the Roman Empire, when Christianity emerged as an institution that combined a universal ideal of brotherhood with many of the trappings of state power.
Ancient Athens’s experiment with democracy challenged the aristocracy’s monopoly over political power and justice, and also bequeathed philosophical ideals of patriotism and community that could compete with family loyalties. Rome pioneered a professional army, bureaucracy, and system of universal laws to curb the exercise of private power. And Christianity contributed spiritual beliefs that elevated loyalty to God above family and marital ties. Its changing positions on sexuality and divorce would eventually change the rules of marriage throughout the West.
The Athenian Experiment
In the eighth century B.C., Greece was a collection of regional chiefdoms ruled by warrior kings. As prosperous city-states emerged out of some of these chiefdoms, there also arose new social classes that made their living through manufacturing, trade, or administrative skills rather than relying on family ties and marriage alliances. The nobles held these groups in contempt and were especially irritated when they surpassed the old aristocracy in wealth. The merchant class in turn was infuriated that lordly families dominated political life through their kin and marriage connections and placed family advantage ahead of the broader interests of the city or state in which they lived. The fact that several equally powerful noble families, all vying for supremacy, existed in the same geographic region made Greece especially unstable and disrupted the orderly conduct of economic and political life.
1
Loyalty to a country, institution, or abstract principle was foreign to the thinking of aristocrats and kings. Their obligations were based on family ties, marital alliances, and personal oaths of friendship. Homer’s epic poem the
Iliad,
written during the eighth century B.C., reflects the intensely personal nature of obligations and loyalty in the aristocratic class. The war with Troy takes place over a case of adultery. The hero Achilles refuses to fight for Greece because Agamemnon has stolen the woman he desires. When Achilles relents, he does so only to avenge the death of his best friend.
Even the system of justice in aristocratic society was based on family ties. Traditional obligations of kinship made anyone who killed a prominent individual—even in defense of the state or at the order of a ruler—subject to vengeance and retribution from the victim’s family and friends. Early laws in Greece explicitly declared that male relatives, up to and including the “sons of cousins,” were responsible for avenging an individual’s murder.
Sometimes families agreed that one of their own had committed a crime and needed to pay restitution. If not, the avenger was subject to revenge by the original killer’s family. With everyone, including sons of cousins, obliged to seek vengeance, this system of “justice” could degenerate into feuds that triggered an ongoing cycle of killing, a situation often portrayed in Greek drama.
In the seventh and sixth centuries B.C, tyrants seized power in several Greek city-states and imposed their will on other powerful families. The word
tyrant
had a more positive meaning than it does today. Tyrants usually had the support of the impoverished peasants and the new middle classes that made their living in trade and industry and craved stability. Both groups thought that the rule of a single dictator, no matter how high-handed, was preferable to the incessant infighting of rival noble clans.

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